Apple Intelligence AI, iOS 18 expected

We’re seated. Tim Cook briefly said hello in the pre-recorded video then kicked it off to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. Cook said it will be action-packed and memorable. He also said that Apple will announce “profound new intelligence capabilities.” A little strange he didn’t say “artificial intelligence.”

“Speaking of special, we are incredibly excited … this is a big one … no silly gags, no ridiculous props” Federighi said.

— Kif Leswing

This is a very important event for Apple. The company is facing pressure to show off its artificial intelligence tech and how it folds into its products and software. The company long avoided using the acronym AI when talking about it, instead preferring to say machine learning. But, companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta have popularized the term and are racing to add AI to core services, mostly to the benefit of Nvidia, which powers it.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has teased “big plans,” a change of approach for a company that doesn’t like to talk about products before they’re released. We’ll learn about those plans today.

–Kif Leswing

Here’s a peep at what Apple stock is doing leading into the event. It remains the third-largest U.S. company behind Nvidia and Microsoft. Nvidia passed Apple to become the second-largest company on June 5, as the stock continues to rip on the back of the artificial intelligence boom.

Also, check out its performance compared to Microsoft and Nvidia over the past year:

No surprise, but it looks like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is here, per this tweet. Bloomberg had reported that Apple is partnering with OpenAI to provide some of its artificial intelligence capabilities. Altman has been there in the past, too. In 2008, he was on stage showing off his app Loopt.

— Todd Haselton

I just got to my seat. People are mulling around and waiting for the event to start. The audience will watch a prerecorded video of the event, so don’t expect much live commentary from Apple executives. Based on the conference scheduling, it looks like this event is going to last about two hours.

Also, check this out. Apple opens up a huge door at its headquarters so people can sit inside and outside and see the screen:

There are a lot of big announcements expected on Monday. I’m most excited to hear about iOS 18 and what new changes are coming to the iPhone, and specifically, how artificial intelligence will play into iOS 18. I’m curious if Apple will use a partnership with OpenAI to create a chatbot, or if it will specifically focus on using AI for other tasks, such as summarizing notes, offering live translations and recording voice memos.

But aside from iOS 18, I’m also interested in what kind of changes Apple will make to iPadOS, which is still awfully similar to Apple’s iPhone software. The new iPads Pro have Apple’s latest M4 chip and it seems like Apple should use that extra power to make the tablet’s software more like a MacBook. It probably won’t happen, but I can dream.

— Todd Haselton

Apple CEO Tim Cook will almost certainly open and close the keynote, as is standard. And, similar to most recent events, this is prerecorded, so he won’t be live on stage like he used to be. Instead, everyone will watch the same video you can tune into on YouTube above. Cook will typically say a few words, toss to a quick teaser video and then introduce another executive to break into other topics, such as iOS 18, the new version of macOS, updates to the iPad software or something else.

— Todd Haselton

CNBC Tech Correspondent Steve Kovach arrived at the Steve Jobs Theater super early this morning to get ready for CNBC’s live TV coverage from the event. Kovach snapped this picture before droves of developers and press arrived.

— Todd Haselton